Anchor

“We initially had no concept of replying, no concept of commenting. We just let people record waves. And what we saw, and this was sort of a light bulb moment for us. We saw people manually trying to reply to each other with their voices.”

“Replies have now become that engagement mechanic for us that drives people back, that keeps them coming back into the app, that retains users over time.”

“We saw that the sweet spot, the best length for waves was about a minute and a half to two minutes in length.”

“And I think it should be voice controlled because I think that's native to the medium of audio.”

“When we do decide to monetize, I think it's important to us that the people are able to monetize the content, that the people can actually earn a living on anchor.”

“Anchor led the company until their reported two hundred and fifty million dollar acquisition to Hotmart in 2020.”

“So I think when we first launched, it probably lasted two months. And then I think we spent, you know, a good six to eight months constantly trying to recreate it and bring it back and do these little things to get that spark back. And it never did.”

“The thing that we saw in the early days of anchor and still saw, you know, up until when I recently left Spotify was listening habits of podcasts are very, very hard to break. If you are an apple podcast listener, you're almost definitely never going to switch…”

“I've always been in or around New York, and as a builder, when I was building Anchor in New York 10 years ago, I got to meet USV, and I had an incredible, despite them passing, had an incredible experience. Started a very, very long friendship. I ultimately be…”

“I believe I did my best work when we were three months out of cash. When we were about to run out of money and when we were about to fail is when we did our best work.”